Nasa confirms ‘asteroid’ spotted above Earth was not an asteroid at all

Nasa has confirmed that an object spotted by its asteroid-hunting facilities was actually something else entirely.

The object, known as 2020 SO, is in fact a Centaur rocket booster from the 1960s, the space agency said.

It probably made its way into space with the 1966’s Surveyor 2 mission – which was intended as the second lunar lander to arrive on the Moon, but got lost on the way – and has been floating around since then. Earlier this year, that long orbit brought it back towards Earth, where it was discovered in September by astronomers who were looking for asteroids.

As scientists examined it, they found that its orbit would have brought it close to Earth a few times over the decades. One of those close passes, in 1966, was so close that it appeared to suggest that it might actually have set off from Earth in the first place.